Grab the Free Copyblogger Theme for WordPress

You may have noticed we did a major design overhaul of Copyblogger a few weeks ago. If you haven’t stopped by the site lately, come on over and take a look.

In keeping with tradition, I like to release a free version of the previous design whenever things change substantially. So that’s exactly what we’re doing now.

So, I’d like to introduce the Copyblogger child theme for the Genesis Framework for WordPress. It’s a robust, flexible, and multi-colored interpretation of our previous design, and it’s yours at no charge.

Reader Comments (61)

Hey Brian, Thanks a lot for giving away such a beautiful theme. I haven’t installed it yet, but I am sure it will grace my blog with its simplicity and class. The no-restriction and full functionality with complete technical support is a gracious offer and I appreciate it very much. I think I’m beginning to fall in love with StudioPress child themes 🙂

I have WordPress site that also includes vBulletin forums and a phpmydirectory service directory. I have copied some the styles from my current WP theme into the templates for these non-wordpress parts of the site, so I have consistent styles, headers, menus, etc. I’m interested in a Genesis Framework and the Copyblogger theme, but will I be able to copy some of the theme styles and elements to the non-wordpress areas of my site?

Andrew – as a person who is a huge vBulletin fan and we currently use it on StudioPress, I’d like to suggest looking into using bbPress. They’ve recently released version 2.0 which is very stable, and integrates seamlessly with our themes.

Thanks for the tip about bbPress. I’d love to have a forum that integrates better with WordPress and I’m not tied to vBulletin, but I would want to import my members and all past discussions into any new forums. I had a quick look at the bbPress site and forums, and didn’t see any mention of this. So that would probably be a deal breaker.

So are there any reasons why I couldn’t copy the header and styles from the Genesis Framework and the Copyblogger theme to vB the same way I did with my current theme? I’m not really sure what the Genesis Framework does or if that causes the themes function differently then regular themes.

I’m spoil of choice now, Just brought Genesis Framework + Lifestyle theme + Free updated Child.
Now i can have copyblogger theme (Legally) , This puts me in to serious trouble as i only have one website to try one. Anyway, thank for sharing.

Brian(s), I’ve always liked the clean simplicity of this site. Thanks for making it available to us (yes, I’ll be stealing this pretty damn quick)! Oh, and Gardner, thanks for leaving the pink links off the gray on gray on gray footers ; )
— The Bitchy Designer (seriously, I’ve got to create a site under that name!)

The SEO part of the theme is just incredible.
It just goes to show you the difference between a free basic theme to a paid professional theme.
Glad I made the switch, and I don’t plan on switching anytime soon. The first words that came out of my readers’/friends’ mouths were “professional.”

I have been reading and researching about the most popular frameworks for days for starting my new website. And now, I have decided to go with Genesis. Hope I love it too, as much as the others who recommended it to me. What really convinced me is the number of fantastic reviews, comments and articles on Genesis.

BTW, I have a few questions to ask if you can help!

1. Is it possible to add features like sharing options on each post and the homepage like. StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Delicious etc. for the Copyblogger’s free theme. How easy will it be, coz I am not a designer neither a coder.

2. If the genesis or WP gets an update will this free theme will also be updated to support the latest versions?

1) Yes, there are many social sharing plugins that are available on the WordPress.org repository.

2) The Genesis Framework is always updated (as necessary) to work with new features that WordPress has put into their updates. The child theme is merely cosmetic (design – CSS and images) so there wouldn’t be a need to update that.

3) Yes, that’s exactly what a child theme is designed to do. House any visual customizations (fonts, colors, etc) for the way the site is displayed.

Brian,
This is probably a dumb question but is there a way to install the Copyblogger theme and just try it out without blowing out all of my widget settings? I made that mistake a while back when I changed the child theme of an existing site then when back to the original theme I had… all of the sidebar info was gone and all of the plugins were reset.

Jay – the best way to do that is to move all of the widgets you have to the Inactive Widgets section on the Widgets page. This way you can see what things look like with the new theme, and then you can move them back if you switch back. As far as I know the header right, primary sidebar, secondary sidebar widgets shouldn’t go anywhere if you switch themes since those are Genesis specific ones.

Ah, okay. I wasn’t sure if the Inactive Widgets stayed the same when changing the child themes. Of course, that being said, I think I’ll also spend a couple of minutes copying my codes and settings… just in case. 🙂

Can we still see the old theme somewhere, or at least some better screen shots? I was an occasional visitor to the site, but I don’t really remember what the old theme looked like or what features it offered.

Thank you so much for releasing this as a free theme. I’ve installed it and love it! Is there a forum for Genesis and/or this free theme? I’ve got a couple of things I would like to try out with this theme but after spending the past couple of days researching ways to do it, I’ve come up empty.